3D Printing Beagle 3D printer camera opinions wanted.

[Bravo52]

Does anyone here have any experience with this printer accessory? It seems to have a decent online review ratings but I’ve never heard of it. Are there better options? Octoprint? Adrucam Pi?

I’m not sure I have the time to dig deep into any of the Raspberry Pi solutions so the plug n play Beagle looks intriguing…

https://www.amazon.com/CCTREE-Monitoring-Connection-Generate-Time-Lapse/dp/B0BDM5LGW9/ref=sr_1_4?crid=1LHTV9TZNLZQ3&keywords=3d%2Bprinter%2Bcamera&qid=1671517592&sprefix=3d%2Bprinter%2Bcamera%2Caps%2C201&sr=8-4&th=1

 

[cwbullet]

I have seen a demo and it appears to work well.

 

[tHoagland]

I know nothing about this product except for what I read in the link but I'd have two reservations:

1) long term support: as a "black box" if you need support, it can only come from the manufacturer and if they go under or no longer responsive it becomes a paperweight. This, compared to Octoprint, which is open source and if the current (full time developer/maintainer) moves on, you'll still have community support.

2) security: as unknown (untrusted?) manufacturer you don't have insight into what network traffic this device may be recording or transmitting and to whom. If you do use something like this, I'd suggest isolating it on a separate WLAN without access to the rest of your network (good advice for all IOT devices).

If neither of those concerns you (and for $70 bucks the long term support isn't that big of a deal), give it a try. Personally, I'm really happy with my Octoprint setup but with the (lack of) availability for Raspberry Pis it may not be a great option right now anyway.

 

[alexzogh]

I own one. Seem to own one of everything :>

If your printer is supported, it's a nice easy way to have remote control and video of your printer.


I just uploaded a multi-day print so you can see it for yourself. Not the best video, especially at night.



As others have said, it's basically a black box and you are relying on the manufacturer to stay in business and keep it up.

You can set it up to be LAN only so it won't 'call home' or try and open up ports on your firewall/router. The downside to LAN only is you have to be on the same network for it to work. That works for me, as I VPN into my house to manage local devices, and never let them see the internet directly.

In addition to the above issues, here are a few more downsides I have found:

1) You have just added a new device into the print 'chain'. Now, if either device has a problem, your print has a problem. Specifically, the beagle controls your printer (which is how it keeps the head out of the way for photographs). If it loses power mid-print, it's not like a printer that has 'resume from power loss'. you've lost the entire print.

2) Since the beagle is now controlling the print, it may or may not support all of the features, or even be configured properly to your specific printer. In the video I uploaded, that is supposed to be a giant globe, but looks like a half globe/half waste basked because the Beagle was set to a smaller size print bed than the printer DESPITE the fact I had chosen the proper printer in the configuration. the Beagle took it upon itself to limit the size and just print lines instead of going over what it thought were the bed size limitations.


With all of that said, if it's connected to a compatible printer, set up properly, and on a battery backup, it's a very convenient device. In the photo above, I checked it remotely, saw the print was failing, and stopped the print remotely.

 

[Bravo52]

Thanks for the writeup Alex. The more I dig into the camera, I think I'm going to pass on this particular setup. I'm not sure what I'll do as the "camera" setup I have now lets me check in on prints but no control of the printer. I guess at this point it does more to satisfy my curiosity while printing. In the end, this may mean I have to jump into the Octoprint/Raspberry Pi route.

Thanks for taking the time to write up the pros/cons.

 

[tHoagland]

For what it's worth, I really like the usability of my Octoprint setup. Being able to send the gcode directly to the printer from the slicer (Cura in my case) and never having to move around and SD card is so much better. (At least for me). Like Alex's Beagle, I keep my Octoprint instance local and VPN into my home network when I want to check it remotely and being able to stop a failed print from anywhere is nice.

 

[OverTheTop]

^^^ What he said. We run Octoprint at work and it works well, for both control and camera interface. Apparently it was a bear to set up though, but that was coming from a mechanical engineer .

 

[tHoagland]

^^^ What he said. We run Octoprint at work and it works well, for both control and camera interface. Apparently it was a bear to set up though, but that was coming from a mechanical engineer .

In the past it was a bit "involved" but now there is a supported Octoprint image available through the RPi imaging software so it's about six very well documented button clicks.

 

[alexzogh]

If you have a Microcenter around you, they sell a complete kit with an octoprint image on an SD card, camera, raspberry pi and a case ready to go

https://www.microcenter.com/product/629382/inland-pi-4b-2gb-octoprint-kit

 

[Bravo52]

I looked at those kits from Microcenter and the issue seems to be the availability of the Raspberry Pi. From what I'm hearing they are out of stock everywhere (at least the 4B) and there is no idea when they will be available. It's not critical for me so I have some time to wait in necessary. I may start looking around ebay or what not...

 

[tHoagland]

I looked at those kits from Microcenter and the issue seems to be the availability of the Raspberry Pi. From what I'm hearing they are out of stock everywhere (at least the 4B) and there is no idea when they will be available. It's not critical for me so I have some time to wait in necessary. I may start looking around ebay or what not...

Raspberry Pi availability has been an issue for almost 2 years now. The Raspberry Pi Foundation made an announcement a couple weeks ago that they had 100,000 that were going out to those on the waiting list and that they believe the bottleneck will be easing up first quarter of 2023 and good availability by summer.

They are available on ebay/Amazon but at crazy mark-ups. I got a couple a few months ago from Digikey. They were backorder and took about 3 months to get but I paid MSRP.